SOURCE: Applebaum, Anne. “Laughing All the Way to the Bonk.” Spectator (27 November 1993): 40–41.

In the following review, Applebaum offers a negative assessment of Fire with Fire.

Fire with Fire is an odd work. Neither fiction, nor journalism, nor criticism, nor autobiography, it nevertheless retains elements of all four: there are eye-catching, source-free statistics (‘most women have been sexually harassed at work’), up-to-date anecdotes (Anita Hill, Hillary Clinton, and the women of Sarajevo all make appearances), and odd bits and pieces of popular culture (the films Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction get a mention, and advertisements for Donna Karan clothes are analysed at length). All of these are spiced up with the author's very own erotic recollections.

It makes for some confusing reading, but I stuck to it long enough to pick up the two basic themes. The first of these is that it is better for women to make...